"reading" homer through oral tradition
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"Reading" Homer through Oral Tradition
Foley, John Miles.
College Literature, 34.2, Spring 2007, pp. 1-28 (Article)
Published by West Chester University
DOI: 10.1353/lit.2007.0015
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For beyond all mortal men the singers
have a share
of honor and reverence, since the Muse
has taught them
the pathways, for she loves the singers
tribe. (Odyssey 8.479-81)
Reading Homer today, nearly three mil-
lennia after the fact, presents us with
some fresh and exciting opportunities
alongside some persistent challenges. Notleast among the newer developments is the
relatively recent discovery that behind our
surviving manuscripts lurks a longstanding,
textless oral tradition. In other words, before
the Iliad or Odyssey assumed any kind of
written formnever mind our convenient
modern editions and translationsthere
existed an ancient Greek oral storytelling tra-
dition, an unwritten vehicle for the tales that
surround the Trojan War and its aftermath.
Words were, as Homer himself often charac-
terizes them,wingd rather than inscribed,
Reading Homer through OralTradition
John Miles Foley
John Miles Foley is W.H. Byler
Endowed Chair in theHumanities and Curators
Professor of Classical Studies
and English at the University of
Missouri-Columbia, where he
also directs the Center for
Studies in Oral Tradition.Among his major books are
Homers Traditional Artand
How to Read an Oral Poem.
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and non-literate bards (aoidoi) performed songs (aoidai) from their repertoires
before audiences of listeners. In the beginning, then, the epics we cherish as
books took shape not as silent texts but rather as audible story-performances.
If the modern (re-)discovery of oral tradition was chiefly the accom-
plishment of the previous century, then its consequences provide a formida-ble critical agenda for the twenty-first century. In short, we have come to
recognize that Homers epics circulated in oral tradition for a substantial
period before they were recorded, and so now we have before us the excit-
ing and demanding prospect of applying that new understanding to our pres-
ent-day reading.That the Iliadand Odyssey stemmed from an oral tradition
is beyond doubt, but how does that complex reality affect our grasp of the
poems? Do we read Homers epics differently because of their unwritten
heritage? If so, how? As it turns out, these contemporary concerns representvariations on an ancient theme.
The Homeric Question: Yesterday and Today
The Homeric Questionthe puzzle of Who was Homer?has been
prominent in one form or another from the ancient world onward.1 Within
a few centuries of the time that many have supposed he lived and practiced
his trade, the seventh or eighth century BCE, four or five different city-states
were already claiming Homer as a native son. Wide disagreement over theidentity of his father and mother, his specific era, and even the poems that he
composed (in addition to the Iliad and Odyssey, the only two to survive
whole) further muddied the waters. Notwithstanding heroic efforts over sub-
sequent periods to construct a believable biography, today much remains lost
in the past, the result of fragmentary evidence and contradictory lives of
Homer.2
The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sought to answer the
Question by formulating a binary theory of authorship. The so-called
Analysts argued for composite, layered epics that were pieced together by
redactors; by ascribing the Iliad and Odyssey to multiple individuals, they
accounted for perceived inconsistencies that otherwise seemed to defy expla-
nation.At the opposite end of the spectrum lay the Unitarians, who believed
in a single master-poet solely responsible for creating both massive poems.
During this period, then, scholars and students had first to select between
two irreconcilable theoriesone or many Homersand then to interpret
the epics from that chosen perspective.
About two decades into the twentieth century another solution arosethat effectively reframed the Homeric Question, highlighting neither a sin-
gle person nor multiple contributors but focusing instead on a continuous,
ongoing oral tradition behind the poems. Instead of construing the Iliadand
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Odyssey as either conventionally authored works or pieced-together editions,
Milman Parry portrayed them as products of a generations-long process of
composition in performance.Think of the Homeric oral tradition as a living
inheritance, passed down from one epoch to another and refashioned by
each performer, and you have the general idea of what he was advocating.Parrys explanation proceeded in three basic stepstextual analysis,
comparative anthropology, and fieldwork.3 Texts came first, as he demon-
strated the traditional nature of the epics by showing how the famous noun-
epithet names (wily Odysseus,grey-eyed Athena,swift-footed Achilles,
and the rest) were part of an elaborate, flexible system for constructing hexa-
meter lines.4 The poets, he claimed and painstakingly illustrated, used a spe-
cialized language for making Homeric verses, a language that provided
ready-made solutions to all possible compositional challenges. Parry reasonedthat such formulaic phrases or atomsof diction amounted to a symptom of
a poetry made and re-made over centuries within a coherent tradition.
Next, and as a result of his exposure to comparative accounts of living
oral poetries, especially through the agency of Matija Murko, a Slavicist who
attended his thesis defense,5 Parry soon made the leap to recognizing that
this kind of traditional composition must also originally have been oral. In
two famous articles published in 1930 and 1932, he made the case for
Homeric diction as the product of composition in performance, of a longtradition of oral bards who must have sung (not written) ancient Greek epics.
According to this hypothesis, our surviving manuscripts stand at the end of
centuries of oral performances, in some way serving as fixed epitomes of that
ongoing process.
Parrys third step consisted of on-site fieldwork: testing his hypothesis
about Homeric oral tradition in the living laboratory of the Former
Yugoslavia, chiefly in what we today call Bosnia.6 In 1933-35, and in the
company of Albert Lord and their native translator and colleague, Nikola
Vujnovic, he journeyed to six geographical regions in order to experience
and record hundreds of oral epic performances by preliterate bards, orguslari.
The result of that expedition was first and foremost what Lord described as
a half-ton of epic: scores of acoustically recorded and dictated perform-
ances deposited in the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature at
Harvard University.7 Just as crucially, after Parrys untimely death in 1935
Lord used their collected material to complete the analytical experiment
they had traveled to the Balkans to conduct.8 It soon became apparent that
the very same kinds of structures and patterns that Parry had found in thetexts of Homer were also highly prominent and functional in the South
Slavic oral epic songs.The preliterate performers of epske pjesme, it turned
out, employed a similarly specialized language (noun-epithet formulas,
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stereotyped scenes, and so forth); in other words, theseguslaricomposed their
epic poetry Homerically.The hypothesis of an ancient Greek oral tradition
appeared to be proven by analogy.
In subsequent years the so-called Oral Theory has expanded enor-
mously from the initial comparison of Homer and the South Slavic epics toinclude more than 150 different oral traditions from six of the seven conti-
nents and from ancient times through the modern day.9 Among the areas that
have been examined from this perspective are dozens of African,Arabic, and
central Asian traditions, as well as Native American, African American,
Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, and many Germanic tongues. In the
past thirty to fifty years we have learned more and more about unwritten
forms of verbal art that collectively dwarf all of written literature in both size
and variety. Most importantly for our present purposes, the Homeric epicsbelong to that international and ages-old inventory of originally textless story.
Naturally, much discussion has ensued since Parry and Lord made their
initial claims, and many have called for rethinking of their hypotheses along
various lines. One early and crucial intervention was the dissolution of the
so-called Great Divide, the notion that oral tradition and literacy were two
mutually exclusive categories that never mixed in the same person or even
the same culture. Subsequent fieldwork from various parts of the world has
shown us that this simply isnt the case, and we have begun to learn aboutthe fascinating ways in which the worlds of orality and literacy combine and
interact not only within societies but also within the very same individual.10
Another matter needing attention was the relationship between oral per-
formance and the versions of the Iliadand Odyssey that have survived in tex-
tual form. Since we can never recover the exact situation in which the poems
were recorded, it has proven wiser to allow for multiple possibilities in
recording and transmission, as well as for editorial and other kinds of textu-
al evolution over the one and one-half millennia between their possible fix-
ation in the sixth century BCE and the first whole Iliadthat has reached us,
which stems from the tenth century CE.11
Regardless of that lost history, however, the epics as we have them remain
at least oral-derivedand traditional, and as we shall see they cannot be fully
appreciated without taking this heritage into account. Its simply a matter of
what we aim to do with any form of verbal art: to read or interpret the work
on its own terms. In the twenty-first century Homeric scholarship has
begun to assess the deep implications of oral traditional origins for the Iliad
and Odyssey, with fascinating results, and that process will continue.ReadingHomer in our timeas problematic as it may seem in so many waysoffers
us this new and exciting challenge.
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The sources agree that Cor Huso journeyed everywhere on horseback,
fully armed and accompanied by a young guide. His appearance would
have been arresting:he wore a red silk coat with sleeves embroidered in the
Croatian style, green trousers, black leather boots, a fez, and a great turban,
not to mention a long knife hanging from his belt along with two sterlingsilver pistols.Very tall and stocky, at minimum 120 kg. (more than 260 lb.),
with brimming handfulsof mustaches,Cor Huso was literally larger than
life, a challenging burden for even the strongest mount, we are told.
Curiously, this vivid representationstrictly speaking, more heroic than
bardicconspicuously lacked his own gusle; he simply used whatever
instrument was available, and prospective audiences were only too ready to
provide whatever was needed to induce him to perform. (Foley 1998, 162)
Several aspects of this account are unusual or unprecedented in a real-
life context. First,guslariwere conventionally local rather than itinerant per-
formers, learning to compose epic from a male relative or neighbor and
remaining most of their lives in their natal villages. Even if they did travel,
their talents would not easily be recognized across diverse ethnic regions.
Furthermore, there was no reason for singers of tales to dress heroically,
armed to the teeth with the very weapons worn by the larger-than-life
heroes in the songs they performed, and certainly no evidence that they ever
did. In fact, mostguslariwere poor farmers or woodcutters or butchers with
minimal possessions.When one adds anecdotes about Cor Huso performingfor Emperor Franz Jozef and being rewarded with 100 gold napoleons and
100 sheep, as well as singing for five or six hours straight (a physical impossi-
bility given the strain that epic performance places on the vocal cords13), we
can start to understand that this best of allguslari was more legend than fact.
Parry, Lord, and Vujnovic heard a great deal about this master-singer,
who was sometimes and in some regions called Isak or Hasan Coso rather
than Cor Huso. Depending on the individual singers story, this Balkan
Homer was 120 or more years old, could jump 12 paces at the age of 101,sang so well that males and females were permitted to mix at a Moslem wed-
ding, and was the certain victor in whatever contest of epic singing he
entered. But although he boasted a repertoire of songs many times larger
than any ever observed during fieldwork,and although he was credited as the
source of all the finest ones, none of theguslariwho sang his praises ever
actually met him.Again depending on the informant, the explanation given
was that he lived in another village, or was always traveling, or plied his trade
a generation or two earlier (he was not even my fathers father, said Stolac
singer Ibro Baic14). Indeed,none of the Parry-Lordguslarihad ever encoun-
tered him face-to-face.
If we aggregate all of his often unverifiable, tall-tale bio-data, we gain
a composite portrait of the master-singer or Guslarnot as a historical person
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Words Versus Words
As primarily people of the book and page (at least for the present cul-
tural moment in the Western world), we approach the act of reading with
a number of built-in and usually unexamined assumptions.20 Arguably the
most fundamental of these hidden agendas is the matter of what constitutes
a word.This may seem only too obvious a concern: after all, we couldnt get
very far in understanding any textsuch as the one youre reading now
without subscribing to the signal of white space between letter-sequences
as a dependable indicator of word-boundaries. Should any doubt arise, we
can always consult a dictionary or lexicon, an agreed-upon Bible of words,
to back up our visual discriminations. But what if this visual, lexical defi-
nition just didnt get to the bottom of what we were trying to read and
understand? What if in certain cases the indivisible atom of communicationdidnt consist of printed letters circumscribed by white space or enshrined
as an entry in a dictionary? Our gold-standard currency for what we mean
by readingthe typographical wordmight prove less negotiable than we
customarily assume.Homer hints at just such a possibility when he uses the
singular forms of the ancient Greek terms epos and muthos, both conven-
tionally translated as word, to describe a whole speech or a story.21 Or
consider the similar terminology employed by the poet of Beowulf, an oral-
derived, traditional poem from early medieval England.22 Mongolian oralepic singers call the same speech- and thought-increment a mouth-
word.23
We can observe the same phenomenononly this time in a living oral
traditionby listening to the South Slavicguslari. Not only do these poets
conceive of a word (recv) as a larger unit of utterance within their epic per-
formances;24 they also describe its identity as a composite unit or sound-byte
during informal conversations with Parry and Lords native assistant Nikola
Vujnovic25
Here is an excerpt from the interview with Mujo Kukuruzovic,recorded in 1935 in the region of Stolac, which focuses on the non-textual
definition of a recv.
Nikola Vujnovic:This recv in a song, what is it?
Mujo Kukuruzovic: Well, here, its thismiserable captive (su anjnevoljnic
v
e), as they say, or thisOgracic Alija [a heros proper name],or,as they say, He was lamenting in the ice-cold prison (Pocmilijo u lednu
zindanu).
NV: Is this a recv
?MK:This is a recv. . . .
NV: Lets consider this:Mustajbey of the Lika was drinking wine (Vino
pije licv
ki Mustajbe e). Is this a single recv?
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MK:Yes.
NV: But how? It cant be one:Mustajbey-of-the-Lika-was-drinking-wine.
MK: It cant be one in writing. But here, lets say were at my house and I
pick up thegusle[the accompanying instrument]Mustajbey of the Lika
was drinking wine.Thats a single recvon the gusle for me.
NV:And the second recv?
MK:And the second recvAt Ribnik in a drinking tavern (Na Ribniku
u pjanoj mehani)there.
NV:And the third recv?
MK: Eh, here it isAround him thirty chieftains, / All the comrades
beamed at one another (Oko njega trides agalara, / Sve je sijo jaran do
jarana).NV:Aha, good!
For Kukuruzovic, and for otherguslarias well, a word had no relation to
our typographically defined item; it was a larger, composite unit consisting of
not a single but rather multiple written words. In the conversation above we
learn that in South Slavic oral epic tradition a wordcan be a phrase,a poet-
ic line, or even multiple poetic lines. In other such exchanges it becomes
apparent that the term recv can also designate a speech, a scene, a narrative
increment, and even an entire story-performance. Although this taxonomymay at first seem strange, once we consider things from the bards point of
view it makes perfect sense: a recv is a unit of utterance, a thought-byte, a log-
ical constitutive unit. Anything smaller than a wordone of our typo-
graphical words, for examplejust doesnt register as a cognitive chunk.As we
shall see below, this structural reality has crucially important implications for
how we are to understand a work composed in words as opposed to words.
Homers Words
What significance does the guslars lesson in the linguistics of oral epic
performance have for reading the Iliad and Odyssey? What can the South
Slavic singers recv tell us about Homers characteristic use of epos and
muthos?26 The short answer is clear: scholarship has shown that Homer (and
his tradition) employed a similar array of large words, or thought-bytes, to
compose the ancient Greek epics. In what follows below we will consider
the structure and then the idiomatic meaning of these units of expression at
three levels: the phrase, the scene, and the story-pattern.
Consider first the smallest level of Homers traditional word-vocabu-
lary: the single hexameter line.27 We have long been struck by the noun-epi-
thet names, like swift-footed Achilles, if only because of their frequent
occurrence.We may even have wondered why they are repeated so often;
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indeed, some translators have seen fit to vary the English rendering to avoid
what they hear merely as droning repetition.But when we add to their sheer
frequency the fact that these and many other phrases constitute significant
metrical portions of the Homeric hexameter line, their identity and utility as
building blocks within a system come into focus. Such ready-made wordscombine seamlessly with other ready-made words to yield whole lines of
verse that collectively serve a wide variety of purposes.
For example, one of Odysseuss standard nameslong-suffering divine
Odysseuscombines with numerous different predicates to portray many
different actions throughout the Iliadand Odyssey. Here are four actual com-
binations:
Multiple actions Single noun-epithet name
But pondered (1 occurrence) +long-suffering divine Odysseus
But went through the house
(1 occurrence) +long-suffering divine Odysseus
Again spoke (8 occurrences) +long-suffering divine Odysseus
Then sat there (1 occurrence) +long-suffering divineOdysseus
Moreover, substitution can work both ways, as it were, with numerous dif-
ferent figures metrically eligible to be paired with a single action. Here are
six examples of how this process works with a cast of characters and a uniquepredicate:
Single action Multiple noun-epithet names
And then spoke to him/her +long-suffering divine Odysseus
(3)
And then spoke to him/her +swift-footed Achilles (2)
And then spoke to him/her +ox-eyed mistress Hera (4)
And then spoke to him/her +Gerenian horseman Nestor (8)
And then spoke to him/her +goddess grey-eyed Athena (7)
And then spoke to him/her +Diomedes of the great war-cry
(1)
If we do the math on the possibilities generated by such substitution sys-
tems,we can begin to understand the power and productivity of this oral tra-
ditional method of composition.At the level of the line, Homer uses a net-
work of words, which scholars have calledformulas, to support the making
and re-making of the Iliadand Odyssey.28
But his specialized language includes other kinds of words as well,
namely stereotyped scenes and story-patterns. The Feast provides a familiar
example of the so-called typical scene, a unit of expression that recurs with
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some consistency but which also allows room for variation according to its
individual placement in the overall story and in different stories.29 In that
way the flexible yet stereotyped scene can serve as a malleable traditional pat-
tern to portray a wide variety of feasts, all of them unique to their role in the
developing plot(s) but still all instances of the same generic word.The keyfeatures of the Feast include a host and guest(s), the seating of the guest(s),
several core actions associated with feasting, the satisfaction of the guest(s),
and some kind of consequent mediation of a pre-existing problem.The most
stable and recognizable form of the core actions is the following five-line
increment, which appears verbatim six times in the Odyssey:30
A maidservant brought water for them and poured it from a splendid
and golden pitcher, holding it above a silver basin
for them to wash, and she pulled a polished table before them.
A grave housekeeper brought in the bread and served it to them,
adding many good things to it, generous with her provisions.
Most of the other key elements are more flexible, with the exception of the
satisfaction feature, which almost always takes a standard form:
[The guests] put their hands to the good things that lay ready before them,
But when they had cast off their desire for eating and drinking, . . .
This five-part sequence of actions constitutes the overall paradigmor
wordthat Homer shapes to fit the individual feast, primarily in the
Odyssey, whether it be Telemachos suffering the suitors abuse in Book 1,
Circe entertaining the captive Odysseus in Book 10, or even Polyphemos
perversely practicing cannibalism in Book 9. As we shall see below, it also
plays a part in the reuniting of Penelope and Odysseus in Book 23.
Another example of the typical scene in Homer, this one exclusively in
the Iliad, is the Lament, in which a woman somehow related or close to a
fallen hero mourns his demise.31 A series of three actions constitutes this
word: an address to the slain hero indicating you have fallen; a narrative
of their shared personal history and the future consequences for the mourn-
er and others; and a readdress of the hero that includes a final intimacy.
Unlike the Feast, the Lament pattern is not tied to particular lines, but
remains flexible enough to accommodate a broad variety of mourners and
perspectives. Its four principal occurrences are the mourning-songs for
Patroklos as intoned by Briseis (Book 19.287-300), and for Hektor as sung
by his wife Andromache (24.725-45), his mother Hekabe (24.748-59), andhis sister-in-law (and central figure in the Trojan War saga) Helen (24.762-
75). It is also the vehicle for Andromaches highly traditional and yet highly
unusual lament for the living Hektor in Iliad6, as we shall see later on.
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Of the four principal instances, Andromaches mourning-song in the
final book of the Iliadis the longest and most complex, although it too fol-
lows the three-part sequence. After acknowledging Hektors fall, the signal
that cues the onset of the typical scene, she continues with the long and sad
litany of what will become of her, their little son Astyanax, and the rest of theTrojans now that their guardian is gone.Among its most poignant features is
Andromaches rendering of the second element in the pattern, as she
describes the young boys fate: he will either become a Greek slave or be cast
from a tower to his death by some vengeful Greek whose kin Hektor slew
in battle.The contrast between these outcomes and his earlier expectations
as Hektors sonthe name Astyanax means city-princeis couched in
and informed by the familiar narrative frame of the Lament scene.The scene
closes with the wife bemoaning the fact that her husbands death out on thebattlefield precluded any final intimacy between them, a reflex of the third
element in the pattern. Overall, we can see that Homer conveys
Andromaches sorrow by traditional convention, not simply in well-chosen
words but via a highly idiomatic word.
The largest species of word in Homers specialized epic language is the
traditional tale-type of Return that underlies the Odyssey, a story-pattern we
can deduce from three sources.32 First, the comparative evidence: the gener-
ic story realized in Odysseuss voyage back to Ithaca and reclaiming of hisidentity and family is one of the oldest and most common stories we have.
It exists in numerous branches of the Indo-European language family and
persists into modern times, when it has been collected in dozens of different
traditions in many hundreds of versions.33 Most basically, the pattern presents
the saga of a hero called off to war who is absent and held captive for an
extended period of time, and who then overcomes numerous difficulties on
his way back home, wherealways in impenetrable disguise and cleverly
testing his relatives and allies loyaltyhe eventually conquers the suitors
pursuing his wife or fiance by initially defeating them in athletic contests
and then (if necessary) slaughtering them. The story may, however, follow an
alternate route that we might understand as the Agamemnon-Clytaemnestra
option: according to this second option the wife or fiance proves unfaith-
ful, having taken a substitute mate, and the tale tracks off in another direc-
tion.Worldwide, the Hollywood ending and the Agamemnon-Clytaemnestra
option are about equally common.
Our second piece of evidence for the Return word comes from
Agamemnon himself, or rather from his ghost, after he listens toAmphimedons account of the slaying of the suitors by his comrade Odysseus
and a small company of confederates:
O fortunate son of Laertes, Odysseus of many devices,
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surely you won yourself a wife endowed with great virtue.
How good was proved the heart that is in blameless Penelope,
Ikarios daughter, and how well she remembered Odysseus,
her wedded husband. Thereby the fame of her virtue shall neverdie away, but the immortals will make for the people
of earth a pleasing song for prudent Penelope.
Not so did the daughter of Tyndareos (Clytaemnestra) fashion her evil
deeds, when she killed her wedded lord, and a song of loathing
will be hers among men, to make evil the reputation
of womankind, even for one whose acts are virtuous. (Odyssey 24.
192-202)Within the very fabric of the poem, a major hero is providing us an overview
of the Return story-pattern, acknowledging that the pleasing song about
Penelope (the Hollywood ending) stands at odds with the song of loathing
about Tyndareos daughter Clytaemnestra (the negative option).
Agamemnons own explanation of the plus-minus structure of the Return
Song squares precisely with what we observe about the occurrences of this
international tale-type of Indo-European lineage: with the long-lost heros
homecoming the path forks and can lead in either direction.When we addthe third piece of evidencean epic called the Nostoi(Returns) that was part
of the now-lost Epic Cycle about the Trojan War and its aftermath34we
can understand that the overall pattern behind the Odyssey is another kind of
word in Homers epic vocabulary.
The Idiomatic Value of Homers Words
Up to this point weve learned that Homeric words are structurally
different from typographical words, and different as well from those textual-
ly discrete items that populate dictionaries and are defined by linguists as root
morphemes.Words in the Iliadand Odyssey are most fundamentally units
of utterance, logical chunks of expression, and they run the gamut from met-
rically defined parts of lines and whole lines (formulas) through typical
scenesand story-patterns.These then are the thought-bytes that constitute
Homers traditional language, and if we are to read the ancient Greek epics
fluently we must be willing to read them on their own termsby resetting
our default cognitive unit from word to word.
So far, so good; weve located a structural signature in poetry that derivesfrom oral tradition and adduced some examples of how it plays out in the
Iliadand Odyssey at each level. But now comes the crucial question: just what
difference does that structural signature make to reading Homer in the twen-
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ty-first century? To put the same question another way, what is the idiomat-
ic value of these oral traditional words? In what follows, I will re-examine
the units identified aboveformulaic lines and line-parts, typical scenes, and
a story-patternin order to demonstrate the traditional connotations of
each level of word. In all cases the idiomatic meanings have been derivedin the same way as lexicographers derive definitions for their dictionary
entries: by examining all available instances of each word in context and
then comparing them to determine what special meaning each bears across
its actual field of usage. For this purpose I considered every instance of two
noun-epithet formulas (swift-footed Achilles and green fear), including
those in which the epithets (here swift-footed and green) didnt seem to
fit the story situation, as well as each occurrence of the Feast and Lament
scenes. Since the story-pattern of Return survives in only a single instancein Homeric epic, I have enlisted the aid of cognate Return epics in other
Indo-European languages35; these sister epics help, along with
Agamemnons ghost and the Epic Cycle shards, to establish the lost mor-
phology of the Return Song.This was the method used to define Homers
wordsa kind of oral traditional lexicography.
At the simplest level, then, we encounter formulas such as the famous
noun-epithet combinations,which have troubled generations of readers with
their unrelenting repetitiveness and occasional awkwardness. Such sound-bytes may be useful, many scholars have observed, but they behave more like
lock-step fillers than elevated poetic expression. Just how many times can
Homer say swift-footed Achilles or green fear before these combinations
descend into clichs? Milman Parrys research showed that the ancient Greek
oral tradition usually had only a single solution for each metrical challenge,36
so Homers palette of characterization and description would seem extreme-
ly limited; in its commitment to tectonics, the tradition appears to have
restricted rather than promoted the poets creativity.When we add the prob-
lem of the frequent inapplicability of the epithet or adjective to the situation
at handAchilles is called swift-footed when running, standing, or lying
down, for examplewe can begin to glimpse the problem.Words at the
level of the line certainly promoted composition, providing ready-made lan-
guage for all conceivable narrative situations, but Homer and his epic tradi-
tion must have paid a heavy pricethe sacrifice of originality to mechanism.
Or so goes the argument, at any rate.
To understand how such formulas work and why they serve as more
than simply fillers, we need to recall their structure as whole words andinquire into their meaning as composite phrases, that is, as functionally indi-
visible units of expression.When Homer employs expressions such as swift-
footed Achilles or grey-eyed Athena or Argos-slaying Hermes, he is
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naming a character by citing a single memorable quality, a tell-tale detail, that
refers primarily not to that characters immediate situational identity at any
particular point in the story but to his or her larger identity across the epic
tradition. The formula serves as an agreed-upon idiomatic cue for the char-
acters mythic history, somewhat like a trademark musical theme associatedwith a character in a modern film or a costume that identifies a re-entering
actor in a drama even before he or she speaks or is spoken to.Moreover, since
the word is the entire phrase, and not (as we readers of texts customarily
assume) a two-part designation consisting of a noun plus an epithet, the
adjectives swift-footed, grey-eyed, and Argos-slaying simply arent
semantically active by themselves.What matters is not the adjective alone but
the noun-adjective combination, and we dismember that unit at our peril.
Consider the following parallel. We wouldnt divide one of our words intoits component partsswim to s + w+ i+ m, for exampleand expect each
of those parts to make sense, would we? Accordingly, the noun-epithet com-
binations for people and gods should be understood for what they are:
whole-word code for summoning the named characters to center-stage in
the epic proceedings. Thats why it makes no difference whether Achilles
happens to be running, standing,or lying down when hes called swift-foot-
ed. What may seem to be a redundant and occasionally awkward filler is in
reality an idiomatic signal that cues (and re-cues) the characters entrance andidentity.37
Just so with the formula green fear, or chlron deos, which occurs ten
times in the Homeric epics and hymns.38 In the Odyssey, for example, green
fear paralyzes the hero as he watches the shades gather to drink sheeps blood
in the underworld (11.43), and his comrades experience the same emotion
as they confront the looming whirlpool Charybdis (12.243).Translators have
often struggled with how to turn this phrase into English, sometimes ren-
dering green as pallid or raw in an attempt to harmonize the color-
value and the emotion within English usage.But if we interpret Homers lan-
guage on its own terms rather than impose our own, we will understand
green fear as a single word and inquire what the ten instances taken
together can tell us about its idiomatic meaning. And when we collate the
occurrences and make that evaluation, we find that the phrase traditionally
connotes supernaturally induced fear.Although no lexicon provides any clue to
this corporate sense in the literal meaning of either of the parts (chlron =
green and deos = fear), the word as a whole implicitly conveys the involve-
ment of a deity. Once again, then, the force of the adjective is muted by itsrole as a syllable in the larger word. Green remains inactive by itself
because it lies below the threshold of the overall expressive unit, which cues
a type of fear with a particular genesis and set of implications.Homeric audi-
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ences, fluent in the traditional language of ancient Greek epic, understood
the idiomatic sense of the phrase and enriched their reception of the story
accordingly.Twenty-first century readers would profit by doing the same.39
Similarly,words at the level of typical scenes offer Homer and his tradi-
tion not merely a structural blueprint for constructing epic narrative, but anopportunity to situate individualized events and moments within a tradi-
tionally reverberative frame.An audience familiar with the three-part Lament
structure, for example, will already have a roadmap in place to guide them
through any instance of the pattern, no matter how singular or unusual.40
Because a word is most fundamentally a unit of language and expression,
it will idiomatically convey its traditional meaning, glossing the specific by
adducing the generic, explaining the time-bound by evoking the timeless.
Thus, when Briseis begins her mourning-song, the fluent listener must haveexpected the entire framework: some reflection on the consequences of
Patroklos death for her as well as some form of final intimacy. The same
would have been true of the laments for Hektor, whether by his wife
Andromache, his mother Hekabe, or his sister-in-law Helen, whose widely
divergent viewpoints are well accommodated and focused by the typical
scene. Exactly how the pattern played out in each casehow potential
became realitydepended of course on the local, specific needs of the story.
Indeed, in well-collected traditions like the South Slavic we can observevariation even among instances of the very same plot event from one per-
formance to another. But the important point for our present concerns is
that the Lament word presented an opportunity for Homer to mesh tradi-
tional and situation-specific meanings, to blend idiom with present usage.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the brilliant application of the
Lament pattern to the strained encounter between Andromache and (the liv-
ing) Hektor in Book 6 of the Iliad.The moment is a memorable one. Hektor
has briefly returned from the battlefield, still armed and stained with gore,
and he and his wife engage in a conversation that epitomizes one of the cen-
tral contradictions of the poem:his kleos-winning (striving after glory in bat-
tle) clashes diametrically with Andromaches responsibilities for the oikos
(home and hearth, including the family unit). Because Hektor defends Troy,
it survives, at least for a while. But because he will go down in the fight
against Achilles, he will by those very same actions leave his wife and child
defenseless before the Greek conquerors. During their conversation in Book
6 these mutually exclusive and yet intertwined concerns emerge with special
clarity, as neither figurenotwithstanding their history together and theirshared commitment to Troyis able to hear what the other is saying; they
communicate at cross purposes.Andromache pleads with her husband to stay
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with her, safe within the walls of Troy, for her and their sons sake, while
Hektor explains his duty to battle heroically for the communitys sake.
To frame this intense exchange Homer utilizes the highly idiomatic
frame of the Lament scene.The opening element,You have fallen at lines
VI.407-10, predicts rather than chronicles his demise, underlining the cer-tainty of his death even more emphatically by enlisting the connotations res-
ident in the typical scene.The second element (VI.410-28), which by con-
vention traces the implications of the heros death for his loved ones, recounts
what will transpire for Andromache: as she observes,for me it would be far
better / to sink into the earth when I have lost you (VI.410-11). It would
be difficult to gainsay her opinion on this point, since, as she explains, she has
no father or mother or brothers to support her after Hektor is gone.And the
reason for her lack of family? Achilles, the enemy Greek hero who will killHektor, was directly implicated in all of their deaths. Poignantly fulfilling the
third part of the pattern, the final intimacy,Andromache then emphasizes her
past and future losses by addressing her husband as her substitute father,
mother, and brother, stressing his vital importance to her in an unforgettable
fashion that recalls what has transpired and resonates with what is to come.
As Hektor stands before her alive, she is already effectively mourning
himfollowing the traditional framework that transforms an already mov-
ing episode into an absorbing and compelling preview of the fate thatinevitably awaits them. It is the Lament word, here intoned long before
Hektors actual demise, that provides this powerful glimpse into a future
they cannot escape.
Homers use of the typical scene of the Feast also has predictive value
well beyond its structural usefulness and general contextualization.41 If we
follow the methodology described above of collating instances and drawing
comparative conclusions about the idiomatic meaning of words, we dis-
cover that this scene betokens a ritualistic event leading from an obvious and
pre-existing problem to an effort at mediation of that problem (Foley 1999,
174).That is to say, in addition to serving simply as a convention that sup-
ports narrative composition, this word contextualizes the existing prob-
lematic situationwhatever it may beand points toward a possible ame-
liorationwhatever that may be.Along with its recognizable generic con-
tribution as a variable framework, then, the Feast also hints at what lies in the
future, the next chapter in the story.
That is a significant dimension of its traditional meaning.Two examples
of this predictive function must suffice. In Book 1 the feast at Odysseushome includes all of the features listed above: a host and guest(s), the seating
of the guest(s), several core actions associated with feasting, and the satisfac-
tion of the guest(s), as well as both the five-line core involving the maidser-
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vants provision of water for washing together with the housekeepers distri-
bution of bread and the two-line coda marking the satisfaction of the guests.
The pre-existing problem consists, of course, of the arrogant and destructive
behavior of the suitors, who have for years abused the absent Odysseuss hos-
pitality by consuming the Ithacan household as part of their quest to wedPenelope.Telemachos is himself helpless to put a stop to their presumptuous
behavior,but after the feast concludes Athena, in disguise as his fathers guest-
friend Mentes, instills courage into the young man, just as she had promised
to do during the prior council of the gods in Book 1. Her advice triggers
Telemachoss voyage of discovery, and her encouragement helps prompt his
transformation from the boy whom Odysseus left behind to the man who
will one day assist his father in taking revenge on the suitors. On a much
more modest level, the final feast in the Odyssey, wherein Odysseus and hisfather Laertes share a humble meal (24.385ff.), signals the climactic media-
tion that eventually arrives in the form of the Peace of Athena. In fact,
Homer uses two of his traditional words in conjunction to tell the story of
how the uprising by the slain suitors families was quelled: at the level of the
typical scene the Feast cues a mediation to follow, while at the level of the
formula Athena causes green fear to seize Eupeithes, father of the head
suitor Antinous, and the larger company. Both the Telemachos-Athena feast
in Book 1 and the Odysseus-Laertes feast in Book 24 can be read literally byreference to our default notion of words, but like Andromaches first lament
they reveal their full resonance only after we re-read them from an oral tra-
ditional perspective, in terms of their constitutive and reverberative words.
Finally, by reading the Odyssey with attention to the largest traditional
word, the story-pattern of Return that underlies the entire epic, we can hear
more of that oral traditional resonance. Most globally, the background
knowledge that an audience familiar with this story would bring to the
Odyssey must have informed their general understanding of this particular
return tale. They would actively expect the hero to leave Kalypsos island,
succeed in winning his way back home to Ithaca notwithstanding serious
challenges, test his familys and allies loyalty while remaining in disguise,
defeat the suitors in athletic contests and if necessary in mortal combat, and
discover his wifes faithfulness or treachery while revealing his identity
through a secret shared only by the two of them. A fluent audience would
be able to follow the generic outlines of the roadmap. But exactly how that
familiar sequence manifests itself in this particular tale and this particular per-
formance could not be foreseen; details remain the province of the singularrealization, as the pattern takes shape via the individual poets negotiation
with the traditional inheritance and (in the original situation) with an audi-
ence that is part of the process.The Return word generates an outline for
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the plot, with suspense deriving not from an unimaginable surprise or a
starkly divergent development but from how each of the expectable stages of
the story will turn out on this occasion.
That idiomatic context, in which a fluent listener or reader weighs the
present, emergent tale against an awareness of the traditional implications ofthe Return word, also helps to solve three of the most stubborn dilemmas
in Homeric studies. In closing this essay on reading Homer in the twenty-
first century, let me explain how interpreting the Odyssey as an oral-derived
traditional poem in its originative and still active context can productively
address each of these quandaries.
First on our agenda is the question of plot sequence. Scholars have long
subscribed to the theory that the Odyssey and other epics conventionally start
in medias res, in the middle of things, rather than from the chronologicalbeginning.42 Thus we meet Odysseus not as he is called away to the Trojan
War or during battle, but rather imprisoned on Kalypsos island and yearning
for his homeland.To account for prior events, so goes the middle theory,
the poem contains a flashback: Books 9-12 fill in the particulars of how he
came to the situation with which the epic opens.But by reading the Odyssey
as the Indo-European return story that it is, we can understand that it starts
not in the middle but at the logical beginning. This tale-type, whether in
South Slavic, Russian,Albanian, or other traditions, conventionally assumes awell-defined back-story: a hero is summoned away from his wife or fiance
to a joint martial expedition that leads to a decades-long absence and cap-
tivity. Idiomatically, the Odyssey starts precisely where it should,with the hero
in captivity and dependent upon a powerful female for his release.Were it to
start anywhere elseat the chronological beginning, for instanceit would
be unidiomatic. Moreover, within the Return word a flashback isnt com-
pensation for lost narrative, but rather a built-in part of the story-pattern.A
fluent audience or reader will thus expect the non-chronological shape of
the story as a whole and, in particular, the starting-point (with its assumed
back-story) and the flashback.That much is implicit in the Return word
as a traditional thought-byte.
Second is the matter of Penelopes actions, especially her attitude toward
the disguised stranger. When does she really recognize him? Along with
Telemachos, dont we wonder why doesnt she overtly acknowledge her hus-
band earlier? Critics have argued over this problem for centuries, each of
them trying to probe her psychology and pinpoint a specific moment of
veiled recognition,but no consensus has emerged. If, however,we adduce theevidence of how the wife/fiance conventionally behaves in the Return Song,
these disagreements fall away.To put it most basically, Penelope behaves as she
does because indeterminacythe ability to actively and persistently avoid
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from the time when the versions of the Iliadand Odyssey that have survived
to us were probably put down in writing in ancient Greece. But notwith-
standing that enormous displacement in time and cultural space, the newly
developed tools associated with studies in comparative oral traditions can
open up dimensions of the Homeric epics that have effectively been lost orsilenced for many centuriesby helping us to construe the poems on their
own terms. During this essay we have briefly surveyed the history of the
Homeric Question,the legendary status of Homer, and,perhaps most impor-
tantly, the nature of the very words that he and his poetic tradition employ
to express themselves.Those words, like the recviused by the South Slavic
guslari, are not at all the same as our words: the thought-bytes of ancient
Greek epic are larger, composite units of utterance and meaning that take the
form of recurrent phrases, scenes, and story-patterns. And we have furtherseen that structural usefulness is but one function of these words; their
idiomatic implicationsthe special meaning they bear as traditional lan-
guageare a crucial feature of Homeric art.As efforts at recovering the rich-
ness of that art continue, it is well to remain mindful of the roots of the Iliad
and Odyssey in their original medium of oral tradition.45
Notes
1
For a history of the Homeric Question, see Turner (1997) and Fowler (2004b).For introductions to the Homeric poems and to ancient epic in general, see, respec-
tively, Fowler (2004a) and Foley (2005).2 As Barbara Graziosi observes of the ancient Lives of Homer:Unlike the biog-
raphies of other poets and famous personalities, they emphasise the lack of a coher-
ent, unified, and self-consistent version of Homers life. Rather than presenting us
with a continuous narrative, they tend to focus on relatively few specific aspects of
the life of Homer, and list a series of contradictory opinions about them, opinions
which typically span several centuries (2002, 9).3
For the early history and application of this approach in both Homeric stud-ies and elsewhere, see Foley (1988).4 On the first stage of textual analysis, see espec. Parry (1928).5 On Murkos influence, see Murko (1990) and Foley (1988, 15-18).6 On the history of the expedition, see Parry (1933-35), Lord (1954), Foley
(1988, 31-35), and Mitchell and Nagy (2000).7 For an online overview of the Parry Collection, visit www.chs.harvard.
edu/mpc, whose official publication series is SCHS. See further the performance of
The Wedding of Mustajbeys Son Becirbey by theguslarHalil Bajgoric, available in Foley
(2004) and in electronic, hypertext format at www.oraltradition.org/zbm.8 His landmark book, The Singer of Tales (2000) illustrates the method by com-
paring the living South Slavic oral epic tradition to Homer, the Anglo-Saxon
Beowulf, the Old French Chanson de Roland, and Byzantine Greek epic. See further
Lord (1991, 1995).
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9 Through the mid-1980s more than 2000 books and articles document the
broad reach of the so-called Oral-Formulaic Theory; for references, see Foley (1985),
with an electronic version including updates through 1992 at www.oraltradition.org.
From the early 1990s onward, with the advent of new perspectives as well as more
awareness of adjacent methods, it is more accurate to speak more broadly of studiesin oral tradition than strictly the Parry-Lord approach; see further Foley (1995,1999,
2002).10 South African praise poetry, composed in performance by literate as well as
preliterate poets, offers one illustration of this kind of bridging; see further Kaschula
(1995,2000) and Opland (1983, 1998).Other examples include the oral roots of the
Old and New Testaments (see Niditch [1996] and Kelber [1997], respectively) and
of many African novels (see Obiechina [1992] and Balogun [1995, 1997]). For
description of an ecosystem of various oral genres within a single society, some of
them practiced by literate individuals, see the array of oral poetic species from aSerbian village as described and exemplified in Foley (2002, 188-218).
11 Throughout this essay I advocate an agnostic position on the precise details
of the relationship between our texts of the Homeric epics and the oral tradition that
informs them. Since we cannot know exactly how the poems reached written form,
it seems illogical and unhelpful to cling to any particular theory about that process.
By the same token, we cannot ignore the oral-derived, traditional nature of the
Homeric language any more than we can afford to ignore the most fundamental
medium of any work of art. For views on the nearly universal means by which oral
epics are collected and preserved in writing and then print (namely, by the inter-vention of an outsider to the culture and tradition), see Honko (2000).
12 In my opinion Gregory Nagy (1996, 90) has offered the most attractive
explanation of the etymology of Homers name, as he who joins together (homo-
plus ar-), a gloss that speaks to the tectonic nature of the oral poets craft.13 As imaged in a verb commonly used to describe epic performanceturati,
to drive out, impelthe activity of singing was so strenuous thatguslariusually
paused every 30-40 minutes to rest. Cf. the Anglo-Saxon verb wrecan, with approxi-
mately the same meaning, which also designates the act of oral performance in that
tradition (e.g., Seafarer, line 1:Mg ic be me sylfum sogied wrecan (I can drive outa true tale about myself, quoted from Gordon [1966, 33]).
14 Parry-Lord no. 6598(unpublished); see Kay (1995, 221).15 This is not to say that actual guslarinamed Cor Huso, Isak, or Hasan Coso
didnt ever exist; there may well have been one or more real-life individuals at the
basis of this legend. But the larger-than-life details, as well as the contradictory nature
of the different accounts, show that what may once have been based in fact had (very
productively) morphed into legend.16 For a Mongolian parallel to the Guslar, see Foley (1998, 173-75).We may also
adduce the Anglo-Saxon legendary singer Widsith, whose name etymologicallymeans wide journey and who would have had to live multiple centuries in order
to visit the courts he is said to have entertained.
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17 For summaries of the ancient sources, see Lamberton (1997); also Davison
(1963),Turner (1997). For a comparison of the various texts, see Allen (1969, 11-41,
espec. the chart between 32 and 33).18 See note 12 above.
19 This is not to deny the possibility that there was a historical figure namedHomer whose actual life was mythologized to serve this legendary purpose,much as
a historical Arthur lies at the root of the King Arthur legend and stories. Cp. Nagys
model of retrojection (1990, 79, e. g.), and see further note 2 above.20 On the various activities understood as reading worldwide, see espec.Boyarin
(1993) and Foley (2002, 65-77).21 For epos, see espec. the formulaic line O my child,what wordhas escaped the
barrier of your teeth? which occurs four times in the Odyssey (said by Zeus to
Athena at 1.64 and 5.22, by Eurykleia to the disguised Odysseus at 19.492, and by
Eurykleia to Penelope at 23.70); it carr ies the idiomatic sense of You should haveknown better and frames each instance as chiding by a senior figure. For muthos,see
the formulaic line He/she stood above his/her head and spoke a wordto him/her,
which functions as a speech introduction and occurs four times in the Odyssey
(4.803, 6.21, 20.32, and 23.4).22 Cf. the Anglo-Saxon formulaic phrase and speaks that word at Beowulf
2046b, which acts as a speech introduction; it recurs in slightly altered form (with
tense adjustment, e.g.) throughout the Anglo-Saxon oral-derived poetic corpus.23 As explained by Dr. Chao Gejin of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
during conversation.24 For example, the great singer Avdo Medjedovic begins his 1935 performance
of The Wedding of Smailagic Meho with the following line:The first word:God, help
us! (SCHS, vol. 4, 55, translation mine).25 For a full discussion of what Vujnovic and other singers say about the recv, see
Foley (2002, 11-21).26 On Homeric epos as tale, story and muthos as a performance by a speaker,
see Martin (1989, espec. 1-42).27 Without indulging in undue complexities, we can observe that the hexame-
ter line is composed of regular metrical parts defined by regular word-divisions thatalso turn out to be word-divisions. A single line, then, consists of rule-governed
sections, and recurrent phrases exist within the poetic tradition to fit those sections.
For more detail on the metrical substructure of the Homeric line, see Foley (1990,
52-84).28 For further background on formulaic language in Homer, see Edwards (1986,
1988, 1997), Foley (1990, 121-57), Russo (1997), and Clark (2004).29 On the traditional variation among instances of the Homeric feasting scene,
see Foley (1999, 171-87) and Reece (1993). On typical scenes in Homer, see
Edwards (1992).30 Books 1.136-40, 4.52-56, 7.172-76, 10.368-72, 15.135-39, and 17.91-95.
See further Foley (1999, 305, n. 8).
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31 For thorough studies of the Lament as a typical scene, see Foley (1991, 168-
74; 1999, 187-99); also Du (2002). Related studies include Alexiou (1974) and
Fishman (2006).32 For a full discussion of the Return story-pattern in the Odyssey and compar-
ative oral epic, see Foley (1999, 115-67).33 For example, the ancient Greek, South Slavic, Russian, Bulgarian,Albanian,
Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, Turkic (central Asian), and Balochi traditions. The
South Slavic epic tradition alone accounts for hundreds of collected instances, only
a small percentage of which have yet seen formal publication; see espec. SCHSand
Kay (1995, 83 e.g., the song-titles beginning with Ropstvo, or Captivity, depend-
ably identify a Return epic).34 On the Epic Cycle, see espec. Burgess (2004) and Davies (1989).35 I make no assumption about whether the relationship among various com-
parative instances is the result of historical diffusion or Indo-European genetics,although given the geographical and temporal distances both dynamics must have
been operative.The international story-type is of course one of many that have been
documented in multiple cultures and eras, but perhaps no others so broadly as the
Odyssey-story. For another deployment of the Return story-pattern in a different
genre from ancient Greece, see the analysis of the Homeric Hymn to Demeterin Foley
(1995, 136-80).36 In discussing systems of formulaic phrases, Parry observed that the thrift of
a system lies in the degree to which it is free of phrases which, having the same met-
rical value and expressing the same idea, could replace one another (1971, 276). Itshould be noted that thrift is a characteristic of some Homeric formulaic language
(chiefly the noun-epithet names) but not of the majority of the epic diction.
Likewise, it proves not to be a feature of either South Slavic oral epic or Anglo-Saxon
oral-derived poetry (Foley 1990, 163-64 and 354, respectively).37 The epithet Argos-slaying (Argeiphonts) provides a classic case of this phe-
nomenon. It is used in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (line 84) to characterize the
infant Hermes long before he accomplishes the deed it celebrates, leading some crit-
ics to see the application of the noun-epithet phrase as clumsily non-chronological.
But the formula names Hermes traditionally as a mythic character; it is the wholewordand not its composite syllablesthat matters.
38 For a full account and discussion of this phrase, see Foley (1999, 216-18).39 Of course, no matter how assiduously we use the tools available to us (search-
able digitized versions of Homer, etc.), we can never aspire to the fluency of the
ancient audience. But by practicing the kind of traditional lexicography advocated
hereeffectively by trying to read Homers words on their own termswe can
certainly do better than default to text-centered dilution of his (and his traditions)
artistry.A partial victory in learning the traditional language is far preferable to out-
right surrender. For numerous additional examples of reading Homers words, seeFoley (1999).
40 On the implications of the Lament scenes in the Odyssey, see Foley (1999,
187-98).
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